Hyderabad: City-based academicians are smiling, rather having the last laugh. Witnessing a spurt in applications for post graduate courses for the new academic season, their stand of “academics over easy money” now seems vindicated. With universities in Hyderabad receiving over 25-50 per cent more applications as compared to last year, they believe the BPO-enabled lifestyle and culture has come to its logical end.
Officials of various universities say the spurt in applications for PG courses is largely due to the freeze in the job market across all sectors. With fresh graduates failing to get jobs, especially in BPOs, they have turned to academics, willingly or unwillingly. Officials of universities say these students are now opting for higher education and surprisingly, even research.
While graduates are upset about not being being able to earn those “easy bucks” right after college, principals of city degree colleges are for once thanking the recession. They feel it has helped “promote the benefits of higher education among the youth”.
“These MNC jobs had spoilt the students. Companies recruited them at an age when these children were not even mature. I am glad that phase is over,” said Sister Alphonsa Vattoly, principal, St Francis Degree College. She further added that this freeze on jobs had also made students take up PG courses that would help them in pursuing professions like teaching. “We need more teachers and lecturers. If everybody opts for an MBA and an IT job, where will we get teachers for our colleges. Recession has helped in promoting these professions,” she said.
“The poor state of the market has perhaps helped students to realise that we do need historians and sociologists too, apart from techies, for better development of the country,” said Father Francis Xaviers, principal, St Xaviers College. He hopes that this trend of students preferring a higher degree over easy money continues even when the market starts looking up again.
   Last year, Osmania University had received around 93,000 applications for its various PG programmes. This time around the university has 1,21,500 applications on its desk, with the maximum number of students applying for MSc in Chemistry or Biology. “Until recently graduates from all streams easily landed jobs that paid them anything between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000. But now things are different. There are no jobs for them and hence they are turning to academics,” said K Pratap Reddy, director of admissions, Osmania University.
   He added that more and more students were now opting for pure science subjects at the PG level hoping to get some job openings in these fields. “Now that openings in the IT sector are very few, students are trying to find jobs in other sectors,” Reddy said.
   The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) too has seen a 50 per cent increase in the number of applications it received for its PG courses this year. Not denying that the lack of job opportunities could possibly be one of the reasons for this surge in numbers, Abhai Maurya, vice-chancellor, EFLU said that it was also because of growing awareness among students, especially in remote areas, about the various PG programmes being offered by city universities.“Students are gradually getting to know about the several avenues available after securing a PG degree and are hence showing more interest in enrolling themselves into these courses,” said Maurya.
   With more students from their colleges pursuing higher education this time, degree college principals are indeed a happy lot. They feel that the recession has proved to be good for academics as students are not dropping out of college right after their graduation and also looking at other professions apart from IT.
   Apart from the pure science subjects that are increasingly becoming popular among students pursuing a PG degree, other subjects like Sociology and History, that saw very few takers earlier are also drawing more applications now.